"But have you been to a farm / factory?" (Human Rights, Veganism & Labor)
17 February 2016 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
so I try to record these videos in a way
that'll still be meaningful if you see them five years from now and don't know the context or what's going on boy the lighting is really terrible see if I move closer my face turns blue because the light coming off of my computer monitor is slightly blue if I move back I look a little bit more like a human being but boy my lighting is really terrible oh that's better yeah right look there was a video just put up by Charles vegan cheetah and he obviously was taking a little bit by surprise by someone asking him look have you ever been to a dairy farm do you know about this stuff first and yourself this question and this example is meaningful to me in a bunch of different ways it's come up in my life under a bunch of different headings this is the big empirical question of our time and especially if you deal with left-wing people have you ever been to a garment factory have you ever been to a shoe factory in a third-world country have you ever been to a rice farm to a dairy farm to whatever the it's a meaningful question whatever the case may be and my whole life I've had to deal with basically left-wing people it's never been afraid per se left-wing people making over the top revolutionary claims basically cynical political claims based on misrepresenting the terrible oppression that supposedly goes on in factories farms or what-have-you and zeggen ism is no exception but veganism is not unique in this way because I've dealt with it under so many different headings so I mean I can remember talking to a privileged vegan that's her screen name she's another youtuber here we had just one conversation by Skype her and I and I was saying to her you know like the stuff you say on your channel it seems to me that you you think there's no way for a person to have a life of dignity to have a good quality of life to earn an honest living on a farm you know why why do you think that like have you been to a rice farm have you been to a vegetable farm I've been to a banana farm like have you spent time with farmers have you researched it have you seen it those are worthwhile questions to ask within the vegan bubble like when we're talking about vegetable farming or mango farming or fruit farming whatever you want to say and there also I think meaningful questions to ask of course when we're talking about meat production dairy production what have you to use Charles's own idiom there's also this problem of vegans living inside an intellectual ghetto and from my perspective that's true of the whole left-wing in every part of the world I've ever lived in it's very easy for you to live inside a group of people who never challenge your assumptions about how clothing is made what goes on on a farm and if step one of your political perspective on the world is already detached from empirical reality if you aren't actually involved with strawberry farms it becomes very easy for you to convince yourself that you know better than everyone who disagrees with you your left-wing you only hang out with left-wing people you have the belief that everyone who works on a strawberry farm is horrendously exploited in fact the exploitation of human labor on strawberry farms is so bad that vegans should feel guilty for eating strawberries in the same way that a meat-eater should feel guilty for eating pork as if the conditions of someone employed and being paid minimum wage let's say on a strawberry farm or just as bad as or worse than a pig that is born to live and die in a steel cage on a concrete floor having its tail cut off having its teeth pulled out in the case of male pigs being castrated through an incredibly painful process sometimes these pigs only live for three months sometimes it's six months depends on the type of pig etc really there's no point of comparison really it's completely surreal to have this perspective and yet right now it is common amongst left-wing vegans they live in an intellectual ghetto where these assumptions just get affirmed in a affirmed and reaffirmed by their selected circle of friends and you know the question hasn't come up well you know have you been to a pig farm this is one thing sure well have you ever worked for a day on a strawberry farm have you ever talked to someone or be friends with someone who maybe worked on a strawberry farm during the harvest season for a few years and then went back to school and got another job people who work on farms are regular people they don't necessarily do it as a career it might lead to it just for a few years or what have you includes migrant workers you can talk to migrant workers who came from Mexico worked on a strawberry farm in America for just one year or saved up some money went back home got another job whatever it was it's very often part of a form of upward social mobility you know the picture is more nuanced than the propaganda that left when people want to manufacture out of it and it doesn't even mean they have bad motives in creating this propaganda but yes step one is that the propaganda becomes detached from reality from any kind of empirical experience and I should note the empirical experience can be living on the farm yourself going to the factor yourself but it can also be research research-based I did empirical research I was living in Cambodia that consisted of going to factories and interviewing the factory workers to figure out how exploited they are very important form of research as mentioned I was doing more the analysis side of it including mathematical analysis quantitative methods on that project I was not physically they are interviewing people face to face well actually I did do other projects where I went where I was standing there well the interviews took place and I actually observed the conditions and so on included visiting some very memorable chicken farms in Cambodia boy yeah and pig farms boy you don't know you don't know ha ha oh God you don't know a chicken farms hell you've been my chicken farm in Cambodia let me tell you oh the adaptation of factory farming methods to third-world tropical countries oh it's ugly but I've been there and I've seen that anyway my point here was you can remain in touch with the empirical reality through research methods also not just through going there yourself in person but through reading research uh some of the questions we would ask the factory employees these are garment factories where they make t-shirts like the one I'm wearing they make clothing make whatever they're stitching pieces of cloth together you know it included how happy or unhappy are you with the job do you feel you're making enough money or not enough money do you think you're working too many hours etc you know how exploited are you in effect how long have you had this job what job do you plan to go on next after you finish this job and with that project the vast majority of the the women because they they were I think they were all women working if I don't think any of them were men the vast majority of the women they were planning to keep the job for only a short time because they were earning so much money that they were saving up money to open their own shop start their own business or otherwise move on so you know the image of the assumption that all factory work in a third world country all sweatshop labor is terrible exploitation well I understand why you formed that opinion I've understand the political purpose it's put to but it's tragic and self-defeating when little groups of left-wing people little covens of left-wing people formed their own intellectual ghettos and just affirm their assumptions about the world and assume that anyone who challenges their assumption is evil because now if you question that if you position me and say well you know I know something about factory conditions and I've been to factories and actually it's kind of a nuanced and complex picture all of a sudden your right wing your evil your heart is not in the right place because you don't three with the propaganda line that's already been affirmed by I don't know 10,000 conversations on Twitter or something wherever these people get their sense of what reality is supposed to be I mean part of the current fad of social justice warrior left-wing slacktivism of speaking out on issues on the Internet seems to be you base your opinion on reading maybe two paragraphs of information on the Internet maybe seeing some photographs of the most extreme example of something imaginable and then the idea is that the morally correct thing to do is to make histrionic and extreme complaints on the Internet denouncing it and complaining about it in a totally closed-minded way that a course doesn't reflect any real-world experience and that's why people who do this but maybe everyone to some extent that's why most people really do get sty need or flummoxed or shocked once someone asked them like well when did you visit a dairy farm what kind of dairy farms have you been to it's a meaningful question to what extent is your opinion guided by empirical experience actually seeing things actually having your hands on and to what extent are you open now to having your political opinions challenged by empirical experience I remember this is like an almost uniquely Jewish thing there was a wave of anti-sweatshop activism more than ten years ago there was a particular scandal about some particular factories in China and there was this kind of incoherence apperently internet driven response calling for an end to all sweatshop labor an end to kind of all these garment factories and I remember there was I think it was one of the Jewish museums in Washington DC Jewish Museum for Human Rights something like that one of the Jewish museums in America they actually got a negative reaction from their donors from the base of supporters the Human Rights Museum because they got together and said look these are very old early Jewish people but they said look I can remember when these sweatshops were here in the United States whether as the 1920s the 1942 ever I can remember what it was like to work in a garment factory stitching blue jeans or stitching suits and ties or making t-shirts like this one and this political movement it's just fundamentally factually wrong in trying to depict this as absolute slavery as a circumstance of total exploitation of man by man you know you can lead a life with dignity and you can earn a good living and honest living doing this work and I know because I did it back when I was a teenager in the 1940s whoever it was I say these were really elderly Jewish people in that States who could remember when the United States had a booming garment industry and when it wasn't the case that America was reliant on importing their clothes from Asia now when you're informed by empirical experience it doesn't shut down the political discourse it enriches it it makes it meaningful it makes it salient and it gives you the basis it gives you the tools it equips you to to come up with policy changes that are really relevant to the world we live in I would think something similar is true about agriculture and factory farming what this gets at I mean in contrast to the sort of left-wing internet activist habits of our time is that not everybody is entitled to speak on everything some people know what they're talking about and some people don't I look in some ways I've led a terrible life if like I can make a separate video about just how miserable my life as an adult has been there has been very little happiness in my adult life and a lot of misery take my word for it but I did have some extraordinarily diverse experiences I know what it's like to be in a garment factory in a shoe factory in third-world countries in Southeast Asia I got to go and visit those places and see them I mentioned with shoe factories in the tropics whoa with this true of a lot of factors there a lot of times they don't have walls you know they have a roof but they're they're open air with big fan so that it's cooler inside so you don't even need to be invited inside to see the factory conditions um and I spent time on farms and I did research about agriculture and manufacturing even when I was a kid I visited farms when I was still in Canada but I visited farms in in Asia my perspective is informed by some pretty diverse experience that some people definitely don't have when they're teenagers and a lot of people don't have as older people either and that doesn't mean that I'm right and you're wrong but yeah I mean I'm making this video in response to the fact that Charles he was just he had a totally sincere inhuman reaction he was thrown for a loop when someone said to him someone you know posed some facts that contradicted his assumption and he was challenged by someone asked him hey when have you ever been to a dairy farm well you know if you're gonna make political claims about how dairy farms ought to change or ought to be abolished that is a challenge you should be ready to answer and the same would be true if you're trying to reform the way clothing is manufactured and what have you uh I got some fan mail awhile back asking someone was asking me you keep saying in your videos that you're not left-wing but you never describe what you are after this video I feel like there's even more demand from his feet what my what my political beliefs are the positive but hey if you watch all the videos on this channel from the first to the last maybe you add up all the negative statements all the things I don't believe in and you can come to some conclusions to look out a guy I really am
that'll still be meaningful if you see them five years from now and don't know the context or what's going on boy the lighting is really terrible see if I move closer my face turns blue because the light coming off of my computer monitor is slightly blue if I move back I look a little bit more like a human being but boy my lighting is really terrible oh that's better yeah right look there was a video just put up by Charles vegan cheetah and he obviously was taking a little bit by surprise by someone asking him look have you ever been to a dairy farm do you know about this stuff first and yourself this question and this example is meaningful to me in a bunch of different ways it's come up in my life under a bunch of different headings this is the big empirical question of our time and especially if you deal with left-wing people have you ever been to a garment factory have you ever been to a shoe factory in a third-world country have you ever been to a rice farm to a dairy farm to whatever the it's a meaningful question whatever the case may be and my whole life I've had to deal with basically left-wing people it's never been afraid per se left-wing people making over the top revolutionary claims basically cynical political claims based on misrepresenting the terrible oppression that supposedly goes on in factories farms or what-have-you and zeggen ism is no exception but veganism is not unique in this way because I've dealt with it under so many different headings so I mean I can remember talking to a privileged vegan that's her screen name she's another youtuber here we had just one conversation by Skype her and I and I was saying to her you know like the stuff you say on your channel it seems to me that you you think there's no way for a person to have a life of dignity to have a good quality of life to earn an honest living on a farm you know why why do you think that like have you been to a rice farm have you been to a vegetable farm I've been to a banana farm like have you spent time with farmers have you researched it have you seen it those are worthwhile questions to ask within the vegan bubble like when we're talking about vegetable farming or mango farming or fruit farming whatever you want to say and there also I think meaningful questions to ask of course when we're talking about meat production dairy production what have you to use Charles's own idiom there's also this problem of vegans living inside an intellectual ghetto and from my perspective that's true of the whole left-wing in every part of the world I've ever lived in it's very easy for you to live inside a group of people who never challenge your assumptions about how clothing is made what goes on on a farm and if step one of your political perspective on the world is already detached from empirical reality if you aren't actually involved with strawberry farms it becomes very easy for you to convince yourself that you know better than everyone who disagrees with you your left-wing you only hang out with left-wing people you have the belief that everyone who works on a strawberry farm is horrendously exploited in fact the exploitation of human labor on strawberry farms is so bad that vegans should feel guilty for eating strawberries in the same way that a meat-eater should feel guilty for eating pork as if the conditions of someone employed and being paid minimum wage let's say on a strawberry farm or just as bad as or worse than a pig that is born to live and die in a steel cage on a concrete floor having its tail cut off having its teeth pulled out in the case of male pigs being castrated through an incredibly painful process sometimes these pigs only live for three months sometimes it's six months depends on the type of pig etc really there's no point of comparison really it's completely surreal to have this perspective and yet right now it is common amongst left-wing vegans they live in an intellectual ghetto where these assumptions just get affirmed in a affirmed and reaffirmed by their selected circle of friends and you know the question hasn't come up well you know have you been to a pig farm this is one thing sure well have you ever worked for a day on a strawberry farm have you ever talked to someone or be friends with someone who maybe worked on a strawberry farm during the harvest season for a few years and then went back to school and got another job people who work on farms are regular people they don't necessarily do it as a career it might lead to it just for a few years or what have you includes migrant workers you can talk to migrant workers who came from Mexico worked on a strawberry farm in America for just one year or saved up some money went back home got another job whatever it was it's very often part of a form of upward social mobility you know the picture is more nuanced than the propaganda that left when people want to manufacture out of it and it doesn't even mean they have bad motives in creating this propaganda but yes step one is that the propaganda becomes detached from reality from any kind of empirical experience and I should note the empirical experience can be living on the farm yourself going to the factor yourself but it can also be research research-based I did empirical research I was living in Cambodia that consisted of going to factories and interviewing the factory workers to figure out how exploited they are very important form of research as mentioned I was doing more the analysis side of it including mathematical analysis quantitative methods on that project I was not physically they are interviewing people face to face well actually I did do other projects where I went where I was standing there well the interviews took place and I actually observed the conditions and so on included visiting some very memorable chicken farms in Cambodia boy yeah and pig farms boy you don't know you don't know ha ha oh God you don't know a chicken farms hell you've been my chicken farm in Cambodia let me tell you oh the adaptation of factory farming methods to third-world tropical countries oh it's ugly but I've been there and I've seen that anyway my point here was you can remain in touch with the empirical reality through research methods also not just through going there yourself in person but through reading research uh some of the questions we would ask the factory employees these are garment factories where they make t-shirts like the one I'm wearing they make clothing make whatever they're stitching pieces of cloth together you know it included how happy or unhappy are you with the job do you feel you're making enough money or not enough money do you think you're working too many hours etc you know how exploited are you in effect how long have you had this job what job do you plan to go on next after you finish this job and with that project the vast majority of the the women because they they were I think they were all women working if I don't think any of them were men the vast majority of the women they were planning to keep the job for only a short time because they were earning so much money that they were saving up money to open their own shop start their own business or otherwise move on so you know the image of the assumption that all factory work in a third world country all sweatshop labor is terrible exploitation well I understand why you formed that opinion I've understand the political purpose it's put to but it's tragic and self-defeating when little groups of left-wing people little covens of left-wing people formed their own intellectual ghettos and just affirm their assumptions about the world and assume that anyone who challenges their assumption is evil because now if you question that if you position me and say well you know I know something about factory conditions and I've been to factories and actually it's kind of a nuanced and complex picture all of a sudden your right wing your evil your heart is not in the right place because you don't three with the propaganda line that's already been affirmed by I don't know 10,000 conversations on Twitter or something wherever these people get their sense of what reality is supposed to be I mean part of the current fad of social justice warrior left-wing slacktivism of speaking out on issues on the Internet seems to be you base your opinion on reading maybe two paragraphs of information on the Internet maybe seeing some photographs of the most extreme example of something imaginable and then the idea is that the morally correct thing to do is to make histrionic and extreme complaints on the Internet denouncing it and complaining about it in a totally closed-minded way that a course doesn't reflect any real-world experience and that's why people who do this but maybe everyone to some extent that's why most people really do get sty need or flummoxed or shocked once someone asked them like well when did you visit a dairy farm what kind of dairy farms have you been to it's a meaningful question to what extent is your opinion guided by empirical experience actually seeing things actually having your hands on and to what extent are you open now to having your political opinions challenged by empirical experience I remember this is like an almost uniquely Jewish thing there was a wave of anti-sweatshop activism more than ten years ago there was a particular scandal about some particular factories in China and there was this kind of incoherence apperently internet driven response calling for an end to all sweatshop labor an end to kind of all these garment factories and I remember there was I think it was one of the Jewish museums in Washington DC Jewish Museum for Human Rights something like that one of the Jewish museums in America they actually got a negative reaction from their donors from the base of supporters the Human Rights Museum because they got together and said look these are very old early Jewish people but they said look I can remember when these sweatshops were here in the United States whether as the 1920s the 1942 ever I can remember what it was like to work in a garment factory stitching blue jeans or stitching suits and ties or making t-shirts like this one and this political movement it's just fundamentally factually wrong in trying to depict this as absolute slavery as a circumstance of total exploitation of man by man you know you can lead a life with dignity and you can earn a good living and honest living doing this work and I know because I did it back when I was a teenager in the 1940s whoever it was I say these were really elderly Jewish people in that States who could remember when the United States had a booming garment industry and when it wasn't the case that America was reliant on importing their clothes from Asia now when you're informed by empirical experience it doesn't shut down the political discourse it enriches it it makes it meaningful it makes it salient and it gives you the basis it gives you the tools it equips you to to come up with policy changes that are really relevant to the world we live in I would think something similar is true about agriculture and factory farming what this gets at I mean in contrast to the sort of left-wing internet activist habits of our time is that not everybody is entitled to speak on everything some people know what they're talking about and some people don't I look in some ways I've led a terrible life if like I can make a separate video about just how miserable my life as an adult has been there has been very little happiness in my adult life and a lot of misery take my word for it but I did have some extraordinarily diverse experiences I know what it's like to be in a garment factory in a shoe factory in third-world countries in Southeast Asia I got to go and visit those places and see them I mentioned with shoe factories in the tropics whoa with this true of a lot of factors there a lot of times they don't have walls you know they have a roof but they're they're open air with big fan so that it's cooler inside so you don't even need to be invited inside to see the factory conditions um and I spent time on farms and I did research about agriculture and manufacturing even when I was a kid I visited farms when I was still in Canada but I visited farms in in Asia my perspective is informed by some pretty diverse experience that some people definitely don't have when they're teenagers and a lot of people don't have as older people either and that doesn't mean that I'm right and you're wrong but yeah I mean I'm making this video in response to the fact that Charles he was just he had a totally sincere inhuman reaction he was thrown for a loop when someone said to him someone you know posed some facts that contradicted his assumption and he was challenged by someone asked him hey when have you ever been to a dairy farm well you know if you're gonna make political claims about how dairy farms ought to change or ought to be abolished that is a challenge you should be ready to answer and the same would be true if you're trying to reform the way clothing is manufactured and what have you uh I got some fan mail awhile back asking someone was asking me you keep saying in your videos that you're not left-wing but you never describe what you are after this video I feel like there's even more demand from his feet what my what my political beliefs are the positive but hey if you watch all the videos on this channel from the first to the last maybe you add up all the negative statements all the things I don't believe in and you can come to some conclusions to look out a guy I really am