Here are some reasons for why having children may be altruistic (With the caveat that I haven’t engaged deeply on this subject):
If you are someone with deeply held ethical beliefs and a wider than average moral circle (which feels very likely given the context), then having kids will likely be moral moral than for the average person. This is because your kids will likely inherit your ethical worldview (to some extent) and they may choose to have positive impact through their actions (e.g donations/career) or by promoting those values to others (through conversation, political activism etc). One way to think of this is: what would happen if all good people didnt reproduce, and only people who didn’t care about morality had kids? I would guess that the short-term benefits of good people having more resources would be swamped over a few generations by the negative ethics of a corrupted culture.
there are significant counter arguments to consider as well (e.g the meat eater problem, the opportunity cost of having very expensive children reducing capacity to donate) but I think the above reasoning shows why having children isnt firmly on the buying a sports car side of things in my mind.
Completely agree with this analysis. For readers interested in a high impact career in the UK civil service I recommend checking out Impactful Government Careers. We offer 1:1 discussions and a weekly job mailing list of high impact roles in government.
Morality is Objective
Like this slider- objectivity is a spectrum. The most subjective thing possible is a pure taste satement 'I like ice-cream'. A pure objective statement is '1+1=2'.
In the world of inter-subjectivity there are statements like 'Democracy is superiour to dictatorship'. This has elements of both objectivity and subjectivity.
I think morality is an intersubjective agreement (hence the influence of culture) but supported by biological roots (we possess a biological distaste for suffering and injustice, and a biological capacity for abstract reasoning). These intersubjective agreements combined with objective biological dispositions result in something which is not as objective as mathematics or natural sciences, but possesses a degree of objectivity.
Very interesting article. I agree that nutrition as a vegan is tricky- there can be limits to supplementation (although relatively cheap b vitamins and vegan omega-3 supplements are available online in my experience). I’d mildly disagree with you that gaining muscle as a vegan is ‘much harder’, pea-isolate protein powder and tofu (if you know where to get it) can be a nutritionally complete protein source, price competitive with even with chicken.
I do have a few issues with your list of (potentially) ethical aninal products:
Eggs: I think it’s hard to know if an egg is ethically produced or not, given how poorly enforced and vague a lot of ‘free range’ standards are in reality. Also, without in-ovo sexing consumption of eggs necessarily involves a lot of killing male chicks which doesn’t sit right with me.
Additionally, I’m not entirely convinced of the argument that vegans have worse mental health because of their nutrition. I think it’s as likely that vegans are more likely to be neurotic, self-critical, and politically liberal, all of which are highly correlated with anxiety and depression.